There is now growing pressure on the Labour government to lift the cap ahead of the budget later this month.
Former Tory chancellor George Osborne has been slammed as ‘disgusting’ after he defended bringing in the two-child benefit cap which has pushed hundreds of thousands of children into poverty.
Appearing before the Treasury Committee yesterday, Osborne defended the cap on the grounds that it would encourage parents to discuss if they can afford more kids.
The two-child benefit cap was introduced by Osborne as Conservative chancellor. It bars families from claiming the £292.81-a-month child element of universal credit for third and subsequent children born after April 6, 2017.
According to the Child Poverty Action Group, every day it remains in place, 109 more children are pulled into poverty by the policy. If the policy were scrapped, 350,000 children would be lifted from poverty instantly, at a cost of £2bn. The depth of poverty would be reduced for another 800,000 children.
There is now growing pressure on the Labour government to lift the cap ahead of the budget later this month.
Defending his cruel policy before the committee, Osborne said: “I can’t recall if there was a specific paper that came to me around that, but we clearly felt at the time and it was widely supported across the political spectrum that there were disproportionate incentives in the welfare system.
“It wasn’t so much that they were having babies to claim benefits, it’s that the conversation that many families in Britain had, which is ‘can we afford another child’, was a conversation we wanted all to have.”
His comments were condemned by MPs. Labour MP Joani Reid claimed people would be “disgusted” by Mr Osborne’s justifications. She said: “Decent people will feel nothing more than disgust with George Osborne’s excuses for making children the number one target for his austerity cuts. Son of a baronet, heir to a fortune, he just doesn’t have a clue. It’s time Labour turned the page on his cruelty and I hope we’ll see that start in the Budget.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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